


reinvent, rediscover

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Asexual Relationship, Gen, M/M, Viclock Exchange fic, platonic boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 00:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2089008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock wakes up after a nasty head wound demanding someone fetch him his Victor. John has no idea who he means. Victor is on the first plane back to London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was a sickening, hollow moment that stretched out endlessly between Sherlock very obviously losing his footing and Sherlock hitting the pavement skull first. John was tearing after him, his thoughts a mosaic jumble of wordless terror. The back of Sherlock’s head hit the pavement with a sound that shoved John’s heart into his throat.

“Sherlock, you bloody idiot.” John fumbled with his phone while climbing down to his friend, one lurching step after the other. His internal organs had lost all rigid structure and sense of place, and instead churned aimlessly.

They’d been coming from opposite directions, with John circling around the warehouse to check the back alley in case Sherlock’s top suspect  wasn’t quite as cornered as he thought, and had come around the corner just as Sherlock’s foot slipped across the wet rung.

There was blood under Sherlock’s head, and John dropped to his knees, pausing only to dial three numbers before setting his phone down, not even noticing the wet pavement under his knees. “Sherlock,” he said, hand gentle against his throat. Sherlock’s eyes were open, but unseeing. “I don’t know how your brother’s omnipotence works, but now would be a good time for him to have an emergency vehicle hidden away somewhere.”

But no mystery vehicles appeared out of anywhere, and so instead, John dialed 999 and shouted his intersection as he put his hands to either side of his friend’s head, bringing it into perfect alignment with his spine. He tore off his jacket, pressing the corduroy to the blood coming from Sherlock’s scalp as best he could without moving his neck, and waited.

*

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said, in a voice like a thin layer of ice covering a cacophony of thrashing water, “I can only assume I’ve crashed the bike.”

“Not Mycroft,” John replied. “Sorry.”

Sherlock had a sleeping mask over his eyes. While he’d been sleeping, his arm kept creeping up to cover his face, and he’d mussed his own bandages several times before John realized he was bothered by the light.

“Who are you?” Sherlock said in a sharp voice. “A doctor?”

John was almost amused. “Yes, but I’m not your doctor. I mean, I am, a bit, but I’m not acting in an official medical capacity at the moment.”

“One of Mycroft’s then,” Sherlock sneered. “Delightful. Well, go fetch my Victor. He has atrocious timing; I suspect he’s off getting a watered down coffee from the machine.”

“Uh.” John was pretty thoroughly thrown. “Sherlock, it’s John.”

Sherlock’s eyes were still covered by the silk mask, which made his hair in the back poke up at odd angles, but John could still hear the eye-rolling in his voice. “Every minion you meet wants you to remember his name,” he huffed, as if imploring whatever Gods Sherlock Holmes implored for the strength to deal with him.

“Oh, sorry sir,” John said, stepping towards the door of Sherlock’s private hospital room. “I’ll just go get Mr. Holmes.”

“Bring me Victor!” Sherlock shouted, and reached blindly to his side. Sherlock was suited for temporary visual impairment -- his grasp around the mug John had been nursing most of the night was almost immediate -- and flung it at him. “Not Mycroft!”

*

Sherlock was still shouting as John threw himself into the hallway. He flagged down a nurse. “My friend, Sherlock Holmes is awake, and he seems to be disoriented.”

She nodded curtly as she brushed past him.

Then he went to find Mycroft, still in his denims. He’d been pulled from whatever he’d been doing the night before that required him to look like he didn’t actually run the country from behind the scenes, and he’d arrived with no brolly. “Is everything alright, Doctor Watson?”

“Who is Victor, and why is Sherlock demanding to see him?”

“Of course I sent for him, the idiot child. He was in America last night; he’ll be landing in two hours,” Mycroft said, seemingly ignoring his question.

John tried another route. “He also said something about a bike. Know anything about that?”

Mycroft’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, that is something. Sherlock hasn’t had a motorbike in a decade, at least. How coherent was he?”

“He seemed alright, besides demanding to see some bloke I don’t know anything about.”

Mycroft made a skeptical noise. “You’ve never heard him talk of Victor Trevor?”

It was clear he wasn’t going to answer his question, especially when Mycroft made to brush past him. John didn’t budge. “If you’ll excuse me, Doctor Watson, I have to go tend to my brother now, he seems to not know what year it is..”

*

Sherlock refused to see anyone. Mycroft Holmes insinuated himself right into his hospital room.  

If John knew anything about Sherlock, he hadn’t wanted to see him, either, but John knew from personal experience that when Mycroft Holmes wanted an appointment, it was near impossible to deny him.

John paced the waiting room, on edge and miserable as his best mate, his brother, and his nurse had a conference that seemed to drag on an on. Listlessly flicking through his phone to keep his hand from trembling, he found himself in his contacts. To be honest, he had very few, and most of them only products of his work with Sherlock. Surprise kicked him in the chest as he absently scrolled past Greg Lestrade’s contact info, feeling like a tit.

He dialed with a steady hand, glad to have something to do. “Greg?” he asked, when the line clicked on.

“Finally, you berk,” Lestrade huffed.

“Sorry,” John winced, knowing immediately that he knew. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Everyone thinks you’re Sherlock’s cuddly social-niceties handler,” he said, gruff. “Idiots.”

“I just wanted you to know he’s awake.” John said, quickly swiping his screen against the sleeve of his jumper, where it had been pressed against his suddenly clammy face. “And uh...”

“Spit it out, John. Is he … damaged? Mycroft told me there was a hell of a head wound.”

“I don’t know, to be honest. I only saw him for a minute. He was yelling about a Victor.”

“Well of course he wants him there.”

“Why am I the only one who doesn’t know who bloody Victor Trevor is?”

There was a choked-off laugh from the other end of the line. “You serious, mate?”


	2. Chapter 2

Halfway through his Tuesday morning workshop, Agent Callahan opened the door to his classroom and hovered there. There was a tittering from the top row, and a solitary whistle from one of his students. “Oh stuff it,” Victor snapped, heart in his throat, and immediately on high alert. “Drop off your peer reviews on my desk on the way out, go go go.”

Which wasn’t suspicious at all. Victor pressed a hand to his temple as he waited for everyone in the room to shuffle out. There were about a hundred students in this section, and they were usually one of his favorite groups. Most days he kept them to the last minute of class, laughing and engaged, but most days he didn’t have his day interrupted by his liaison. “Miranda,” he acknowledged, when the room had finally cleared out.

She didn’t have to start with _It’s Sherlock_ , because if it had been anything else, the instructions, news, or pertinent files would have come to him by his dedicated line.

Mercifully, she didn’t drag it out. “He’s cracked his skull. He was climbing a fire escape.”

Something hot burned in Victor’s throat. “What is the point of a John Watson if he doesn’t break Sherlock’s fall?”

She lifter one shoulder, and shoved her briefcase into his arms. “You’ve got a ticket, and a spare sweater vest in there. Sorry, it’s the best I could do on the notice I had.”

Victor groaned. “Seriously, that’s it? Mycroft has got to know I have a go bag.”

Miranda let her face tilt with amusement for a split-second. “I know. It’s in the car. I’ll give you a lift.”

*

The wait was agony. Of course, he’d was receiving updates, discrete text messages from Mycroft as he entered surgery to set and stitch the head wound (turns out _cracked_ was a little strong of a word, had made him imagine Sherlock with an open-egg head, yolk everywhere, but it was minimally fractured) then a single text that read _Sherlock Awake. Not taking visitors_. and nothing further, which he’d been turning over and over until he felt hollow, sick, and exhausted.

An agent he didn’t recognize picked him up from the airport, and they sat in a terse silence on the way to the hospital, and he collected his bag from the booth, giving him a silent nod.

Mycroft Holmes met him in the lot, taking his bag. Victor clasped his hand.

“Trevor,” he said, face creased in worry. “I hope you don’t mind, I’ve taken the liberty of having an agent take over your post for a while.”

“Mycroft,” he said, in a hard voice, to jolt him from thoughts of national security for the thirty seconds he needed for an update. “Is that strictly necessary, this very moment?”

“I had him sedated. He was incredibly agitated. He refused to stop screaming until someone went to  pick you up.”

“That doesn’t sound like Sherlock. He knows how long it takes for me to get to him.”

“Normally, perhaps, but he appears to have some trauma at the moment. He was convinced you’d be coming into King’s Cross any minute now.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Not for…”

“Not for fifteen years?”  

Victor let out a long breath. “Are you kidding me?”

*

He went to see Sherlock first. It had been months since he’d last seen him, when he’d spent three days on the east coast with him and Victor regretted keenly that he hadn’t come to visit before the term started. He looked pale, with his bandaged head. The lights were dimmed to almost nothing, in case he woke up and his eyes were still painfully sensitive.

“He’ll be out for another few hours,” a nurse informed him, and he brushed the hair from Sherlock’s clammy forehead.

“Easy, killer,” he whispered into Sherlock’s ear, just in case there was some place of him Victor could reach, even in his sleep. “I’m here. I’m going to be here for a while. But first I’m going to go visit your friend. I think he’s made big brother irritated by not stopping you from trying to kill yourself and he’s been icing him out.”

*

He recognized John Watson on site, of course. Sherlock was prone to exaggerating, so he was a bit surprised to note that John Watson was exactly as small as Sherlock had painted him.  

“Doctor Watson,” Victor said, and John swiveled on his heel to face him. Yesterday’s jumper, looking just as tired as Mycroft, empty paper cup with a few drops of black coffee in the bottom. John craned up to look at him.

“Yes,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“I’m Victor,” giving it a firm shake. John’s hand was tiny in his own, and Victor was flooded with disbelief. Mycroft Holmes trusted this tiny little man to protect Sherlock when he was abroad? “It’s good to meet you.”

John let out a punched out breath. “Nice to finally …” he struggled for a minute, frowning, “hear of your existence.”

Victor almost laughed. “You know how he is. He doesn’t do sentiment. Wouldn’t do to mention his husband.” Technically, they were ex-husbands, Victor supposed, but he’d never thought of them like that.

John gaped at him. “You’re… you and Sherlock.”

“Take your time,” Victor said, rolling his eyes. “You’ve been here all night, and then three hours ago Sherlock had such a meltdown he refused to see anyone until someone picked me up from King’s Cross, and you didn’t find that out?”

John scowled. “Well apparently it’s a conspiracy I wasn’t invited to.”

Victor shrugged, unapologetically. “Holmes men are a strange breed, very secretive. Sherlock’s going to be out for a while yet. Care to go down to the hospital cafeteria with me?”

*

When they got settled at a cramped little table, Victor made an educated guess and went to head John off. “To answer your questions, I read your blog. I’ve known Sherlock since uni. I met him in ’98. And I don’t stay in the country because of work. Anything else?”

John surprised him. “Did he drive a motorbike?”

“No,” he said. “That was me, but not since I went overseas. Why?”

John fiddled with the salt shaker. “That’s what he woke up on about. That he’d crashed it. He thought you’d be cross with him.”

Victor stared at John, thinking of all the blog entries. He hadn’t even known Sherlock long, in the scheme of things. Sherlock didn’t make friends, not now, but he had once, in his twenties. Mrs Hudson, Greg, Mycroft, Mike, Victor himself: everyone Sherlock gave the time of day had been around for years. John Watson was an anomaly in that he was new, and Sherlock held him in high regard.  “I was furious,” he said finally, smiling a little bit. “But mostly I was terrified.”

Realization dawned in John’s eyes. “And that resulted in a head wound as well?”

Victor gave a sharp nod. “That was august of 2003. The year we got married.”

John gave a low whistle. “Sherlock Holmes, happily married for ten years. Who would have thought?”

Victor snorted. “We’re hardly a conventional couple. The dolt probably still has my tonsils and wisdom teeth in a jar of formaldehyde somewhere.”

“Sounds about right. Sounds romantic, actually, coming from him,” John said, and Victor could feel himself blush.

“Yeah, something like that. I know you’ve been sentry all night, why don’t you go home for a bit, and we’ll call you when he’s himself again?”

John’s jaw flexed. “Himself, or no. Call me when he’s up, even if he wakes up speaking in only Russian. Or bird calls.”

Victor laughed, feeling fond of Sherlock’s little friend. “Good man, John. I’ll call to check in five hours, either way. Gives you time for a little nap.”

*

When Sherlock did wake up, Victor was sitting with him, doing a crossword by penlight in his dark room.

He noticed the change in his breathing immediately, but Sherlock was always an easy startle first thing, so he didn’t take his eyes off of the little pool of yellow light on his page.

“Victor,” Sherlock said, and his name sounded like the tide to a parched man, lush and like everything he’d hoped for, even though his voice was rough around the edges. “Where have you been?”

“Away, Sherlock. I came as soon as I could.”

Looking away from his puzzle, his eyes were starting to adjust to the light. “I think I crashed your bike. I’m sorry.”

The first time Sherlock had said that, ten years ago, Victor had been quietly furious. He’d been terrified for two days before that as theyd kept Sherlock in a medically induced coma while they operated on his bashed internal organs, broken arm, and wired his jaw shut, so after the days of terror, and just knowing Sherlock was alive after all that, he had felt a quiet bomb in his chest drop as he asked him if he’d been high at the time.

Now, ten years later and those wounds had healed over, and the eye, Sherlock looked pretty good for a man in a hospital bed. He moved in closer, resting his chin on the flesh of Sherlock’s shoulder. “It’s fine,” Victor said, nuzzling down with the point of his jaw. And then, because he knew he’d want to know, “They shaved a bit off the back.”

Sherlock’s hand went weakly to the back of his head as he let out a forlorn noise. Victor couldn’t help but laugh. The part of him that was  a functional adult who got along with most people insisted he explain to Sherlock immediately what had happened. The other part, filled with half-a-lifetime of dealing with one Sherlock Holmes, knew that Sherlock would rather puzzle it out for himself. Retrograde amnesia was the sort of mystery he’d get to puzzle out for himself in a way that was quite rare.

After Sherlock’s quick, impromptu pity party, he turned his focus to Victor. “Will you turn up the light, just a touch?”

Victor went over to the wall, fiddling incrementally until Sherlock winced, and then dimmed it a notch from there. “Good?”

“Good,” Sherlock said, and then blinked at him, almost instantly yelping, “Mr. Trevor!”

Victor laughed from his shoes. “You take that back.”

“What the,” Sherlock said, struggling to his elbows. “Come here this instant.”

Victor moved in close so Sherlock could take a look at him. If he wasn’t so worried about Sherlock, he’d be amused. He didn’t often get to throw Sherlock for a loop.

“Did Mycroft do this? Doesn’t he have enough dotty old agents?” Sherlock wet his thumb like Victor’s own ancient mum and scrubbed against his crows feet with it.

“Oi!” Victor said, “Not so hard, that’s my face.”

“It is your face,” Sherlock agreed, eyes wide. “Victor, when did you get old?”

“You’re old too, Sherlock. Want to take a crack at it?”

Sherlock looked at his own hands for a long moment, and down to his body. “I’ve been in a coma for… no. I’ve been … cryogenically… no.”

Sherlock touched his head, thoughtful. There is a bandage covering the bit that’s shaved to the skin. Victor is grateful. Sherlock is funny that way -- he’s not yet panicking about the fact that for some reason, there’s a discrepancy between the year he thinks it is and the fact that he has wrinkles, but he would be a storm cloud if he’s been able to reach around the back of his skull and touch bare skin.

“You’ll get there,” Victor assured him, moving towards him naturally, like the floor between them was tilted towards Sherlock, he jostled him gently to the side and climbed in beside him.

“I feel like I’m getting fondled by your father,” Sherlock complained.

“Shall I go?” Victor said, as he snuggled against Sherlock’s side comfortably. After forty-eight hours of consciousness, the precise snick of Victor’s brain had started to grind to a halt, and he was just glad to breathe Sherlock in. “I heard you threw tea at John Watson until he went to fetch me.”

“I’m rather fond of you,” Sherlock admitted, curling one arm around Victor and drummed his fingertips along his side. They stayed like that a while, and Victor drifted in and out. Finally, Sherlock spoke. “How long ago did I crash your bike?”

“Thirteen years, give or take,” Victor said, without opening his eyes.

“Have I woken up for thirteen years since then, thinking it’s the same day?” Sherlock asked, and then, after a beat, answers: “Of course not. You’re well muscled and had to fly in from elsewhere.”

“There’s your brain,” Victor mumbled, poking his nose against Sherlock’s shoulder.

*

When Victor wakes again, Sherlock has mostly puzzled it out. “A new trauma,” he pronounces. “Entire wings of my memory palace seem to be barred, but it is comforting to know that, instead of seeing the palace as it was then. I must live dangerously, because I seem to have an old bullet wound, a few scars consistent with a short knife, and some sort of shrapnel near my hip.”

“Your sense of self preservation is terrible,” Victor agreed. “But so is mine. We can’t seem to stop. Never have.”

Sherlock was suddenly suspicious. “You wouldn’t sound so wistful if we were still a couple,” Sherlock snapped, his voice painted with the desperate, confused undercurrent.

“Oh hush, you. I’ll always be yours, you silly twit.”

“Something’s different,” Sherlock insisted.

Victor sighed, and held Sherlock’s hand. “I dont have a mullet anymore, Bee. That’s about the only thing that’s changed.”

Sherlock reached up to Victor’s hair, and he leaned into the touch. Too long, too long, he thought from his scalp to his toes. He’d been embarrassed of his ginger curls as a child, but he’d grown fond of them as Sherlock had, when they were teenagers. His hand moved down, to the nape of his neck, and Sherlock clasped him there gently, smiling a bit, “I do miss the mullet, a bit.”

“I’ll grow it back,” Victor promised, clasping the wrist of the hand in his hair, completing the circuit. “Now if you’re feeling well enough, you’ve got a friend worried sick about you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Ozwaldz. (That's her tumblr handle.) She's fantastic. <3

He took a cab back to Baker St, desperate for a shower and a shave before he brought John back to the hospital. He used his key to let himself in, quiet in case John was sleeping. Instead, he spooked right in the door when he realized John was sitting at the kitchen table on his computer, a saucer full of used tea bags at his elbow.

“Oh, thank God,” John said, when he saw him. “How is he?”

Victor smiled stiffly, feeling as if he’d drained all of his energy on being relieved to see Sherlock even marginally well. “Besides the retrograde amnesia, things seem to be well. They want to observe him, but besides the system restore to Windows 98, he seems to be perfectly healthy.” He stopped there. John was a doctor, he hardly needed Victor to spell out for him the uncertainty of Sherlock’s condition, especially since in the last two days he hadn’t been awake long enough for them to get a thorough read on what was going on inside of his magnificent head.

John swiped a hand across the back of his neck. “Good. Good.” Victor hovered in the doorway of the kitchen, waiting for John to say something else.

After what seemed like the appropriate time to wait, Victor said, “I could seriously murder for a shower before we head back. I’ll try to be quick.”

“Mycroft’s assistant Anthea dropped by a box for you; I left it on Sherlock’s dresser.”

“Thanks,” Victor said, moving that way. He felt overheated and grimy from two days of existing on the empty provision of caffeine and adrenaline.

As he stated to close Sherlock’s door, he heard John mutter, “I have to meet Sherlock Holmes again.”

*

Victor Trevor had John Watson’s blog on his RSS feed. The writing was pleasant, if unspectacular, and Victor was already predisposed to like it because of the subject matter. Reading John Watson’s blog had prepared him for an ordinary sort of bloke, swept up into the wake of an amusing madman, like one of the Doctor’s companions.

He hadn’t been prepared for the depth of John’s regard for Sherlock.

They’d shared a cab on the way to the hospital, John silent and wrapped up in his own thoughts. Victor stared at his profile, wondering what exactly he and Sherlock had that made him suitable for all the things Sherlock demanded of him.

“It’s going to be fine,” Victor said, breaking the silence.

John didn’t even look at him. “I’m about to go visit my best mate, and my best mate is about to meet a stranger.”

“Sherlock invited you to move in with right after he met you, John. It’s not like your rapport was years in the making.”

John shrugged. “Last time, I had a psychosomatic limp and PTSD.”

A laugh bubbled to the surface. “And you think now that you’re all patched up, Sherlock won’t think you’re interesting?”

“Not exactly. Just that a particular set of circumstances and cosmic events came together to allow us to meet. I don’t know how it will happen when I walk in and say, how do, I’m John, I do a lot of the scrubbing up after you.”

Victor jostled John’s shoulder with his own, still grinning. “The universe wasn’t doing a cosmic audit. It didn’t decide to fix a mistake.”

John gave him a small, fleeting smile. “How’d you meet Sherlock?”

“My dog bit him in the arse. No, seriously,” he said over John’s laughter. “He’s got a great big scar. I came to see him in the hospital but he was so worried I was considering putting the dog down that he nearly hyperventilated.”

John sank back against his seat. Mrs. Hudson would have said some variation of aw, bless him, but since John was not an eighty year old woman, he refrained. Victor could practically hear him thinking it.

*

Mycroft was sitting with Sherlock when they arrived. With his hair on it’s second day of perpetual bedhead, he looked like a particularly disgruntled cockatiel.

“Ah, just the men I hoped to see,” Mycroft said, in a tight voice.

“That’s him?” Sherlock interrupted.

“The one and only," Victor said. "In a truly bizarre turn of events, allow me to introduce to you, John Watson."

"He's military," Sherlock said, accusingly.

"I didn't pick him out." Victor replied with a shrug. "I wasn't on the continent. He's all yours."

"Oi!" John said. "I'm right here! And I'm ex military."

"Obviously, John. Do keep up.”  Sherlock turned his focus to Victor. “Why weren’t you on the continent?"

“Because I travel and you get bored of talking to your skull, Sherlock. Now, do you have something pleasant to say to your friend?”

Sherlock straightened up in his hospital bed, and plastered on a fake smile. “You must be John Watson,” he said, extending a hand. God, Victor loved those hands. “Lovely to meet you; I’m Sherlock Holmes. I’ve heard so much about you.”

John gave a genuine laugh, but clasped Sherlock’s outstretched hand anyway. “Good to know you were just as much of a berk at twenty-two. I was worried.”

*

Mycroft ushered Victor out of the room so John could some time to talk with Sherlock.

“The professional opinion here seems to be to integrate him back into his life as best as possible, hoping for spontaneous recovery, but not expecting it. There seems to be little left to do for him here.”

“Move him back to Baker Street?”

“Unless you’d like me to purchase the Montague flat again,” Mycroft said with distaste. Victor didn’t blame him. It had been a rough year.

“No, by all means,” Victor said. “What about Watson?”

“John Watson goes where Sherlock goes. I do not know how Sherlock will feel about this, so that’s between the three of you. To be honest, the cohabitation between the two defies all of the expectations I had. I would want him compliant, if I were in your shoes.”

Victor nodded, not having heard anything new, and then took a deep breath. “And the other thing?”

“I’ve someone going through the flat today,” Mycroft admitted. “For the past four years, there’s been a bit held in reserve but not utilized. I hadn’t moved it because that seemed to be the game with him; the fact that he had it in such easy reach but still refrained. I’m not sure how Sherlock Holmes will want to deal with his transport in the coming weeks if his memory fails to return.”

“We’ve been through his withdrawals and getting him clean before,” Victor said. “And if he starts to feel it this time, it will be mostly psychosomatic.”

“One more thing. I’ve had Agent Callahan take over your team,” Mycroft said. “Until we can come to a long-term solution.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll take my leave now. Sherlock is still upset about the incident with the research parrot. I’d forgotten about it almost entirely, and it was the only thing he wanted to berate me about today. Perhaps you could remind him how that situation turned out.”

“Will do.”

“And Victor? It’s good to have you back.”

*

When Victor came back into Sherlock’s room, John was holding Sherlock’s phone in front of him, typing clumsily with his other hand. “This is your blog,” he said, angling it back for him to see.

Sherlock cut his gaze to the door. “Have you seen this?” he demanded, eyes bright.

“It’s really something. But you knew in ‘98 that mobile technology would be. I thought we’d pretty much arrived with snake.”

“Not that!” Sherlock said. “My website! I have fans!”

“You and John here are famous super-sleuths,” Victor smirked, moving close to peer at the screen he was showing. It was the entry he’d written on the two hundred and forty three types of tobacco ash. It was a dry read, and Victor had gone through a lot of trouble to put the hit counter above the five hundred unique footprints mark. Any more would be suspicious. “I’ve had years to get used to having a famous…”

He had to trail off. Husband was mostly how he thought of Sherlock, but it hit him suddenly that he wasn’t. Not in actuality, and not yet in Sherlock’s timeline. Victor’s saliva dried up as he remembered.

Sherlock was too distracted by his delight of his newfound fame and status to notice Victor floundering.

“Your site is more about the science of it all,” John explained. “I write about you.”

“Me?” Sherlock looked up from his phone, and suddenly both men were scrutinizing him. Victor resisted the urge to touch his face to make sure everything was in order. “Is it accurate?”

“He softens you a bit,” Victor said, “but for the most part, as far as I can tell, the Sherlock Holmes he writes about seems in character enough. Maybe even a smidge more attractive; there’s a lot of cheekbones and high collars in his blog. The gossip rags all have John pegged as your number one fan.”

John grinned. “Even your husband thinks I write you like a Byronic hero.”

“I knew it! We're married!”

John looked wrong footed, suddenly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize he didn’t… you said it was the year… I’m going to just stop now.”

He’d told Sherlock they had to get married after he’d woken up, ten years ago, from crashing his bike.

He’d been high as a kite, and Victor had spent hours fingering the rosary in pursuit of Sherlock’s healing, and when Sherlock had woken up, the first thing Victor had said to him was, “You have to get clean. And then marry me.”

“Thanks, John,” he said dryly.

It was going to come out sooner or later. “I basically frog marched you to the altar, Sherlock. You assure me you’ve deleted the ceremony and refuse to let me remind you of the date. For the record, you are not in favor of celebrating something as trivial as an anniversary.”

“Good to know marriage didn’t turn me simple,” Sherlock said, but he was smiling, softly. “Did Mycroft attend?”

Victor grinned back at him. “Oh, no, Sherlock. Don’t ruin the mood.”

*

They took Sherlock back to Baker Street that night. Sherlock opened up his blog and John’s, an compared them.

“You’re entirely too sentimental,” sherlock chided John.

John hovered behind his chair, amused. “I hear that a lot, actually. From you.”

Mrs. Hudson brought them biscuits, and Sherlock was putty in her hands as she cooed over him and checked him over for visible wounds. She very carefully did not mention the shaved patch of Sherlock’s head, visible past his bandage, but she did mention she would knit him a hat that would look very sweet.

Sherlock blushed, and nibbled his way through three biscuits before she went back downstairs.

He kept nodding off in the middle of sentences, even though he was clearly pleased to be regaled with the details of old cases, John stopping in appropriate places to let Sherlock make deductions he’d made before, after being sure to set the scene.

“You’re leaning too hard on the pertinent details,” Victor said, interrupting. “Encyclopedia Brown here already has too many legs up, you don’t have to paint a neon sign on the crime scenes you’re having him imagine.”

John shrugged. “He’s right, but I don’t have crime scene photos, and I don’t have a memory vault for the details that didn’t end up part of the deduction.”

“We’ll have Lestrade over tomorrow, see what he can bring him.” Victor told him. “Tonight I’m going to pour this one into bed.”

Victor reached down to take Sherlock’s hand, jolting him. “Come on,” he said in a low, soothing voice, and steered a sleepy Sherlock over to his room. “Get changed into something soft, and I’ll be right in.”

Sherlock shut the door behind him, and Victor stood with John, looking at it. “I’m sorry about…. you know.”

“Oh, no. Not your fault, that, well.” John floundered a bit, and Victor decided to come to his rescue.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that he can’t seem to remember Lestrade’s first name, but you wouldn’t doubt that he holds him in the highest regard. I, myself, send him a Happy Coworker’s Day card every year on our anniversary because he seems to be under the impression that people who celebrate such a thing are all daft. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

John nodded mutely.

“All I’m saying is, Sherlock will get his memories back, or you guys can rebuild. I don’t know why Sherlock compartmentalizes his life so strangely, but not knowing about me doesn’t mean he cares about you any less.”

“Thanks,” John said, and seemed to mull it over. “I’m sorry, I should have thought of it before -- should I have gone to stay with my sister? Do you guys need...”

Victor let out a short laugh. “That’s kind of you, but, ah, we’re not really that sort of couple.”

John’s eyebrows did a sudden jump, and then lowered like surprise had jerked them out of his control, but now he had regained it. “Oh. I see.”

“Probably not,” Victor said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “But nevertheless, this is where you belong. I’ll be out of your hair before long. I love the hell out of Sherlock, but as soon as he’s back to himself, he’ll be wanting his space, and I’ll be glad to know everything is still spinning in Baker Street as it should be.”

It was such a strange thing; there was no easy way to describe the way he loved Sherlock, but still had to send him a yearly wish for him to have a happy coworkers day, because they both technically received occasional paychecks from the british government. No easy way to say, husbands, ex husbands, somewhere in between.

John, puzzled, wished him a good night.

*

Victor Trevor crawled into bed with Sherlock, feeling the full-body relief that usually arrived the moment after he sank into a perfectly-drawn bath.

Victor moved behind him, noticing only after he was nestled in at Sherlock’s back that Sherlock had apparently given up on fighting off his trousers and left them with one leg pushed all the way down to his knee, and the other clinging to his thigh. “Oh, Sherlock,” he rumbled, sitting back up and working them down his legs.

“If I wanted them off,” Sherlock said, drowsy enough from his pain meds that Victor’s favorite lisp was present, “I’d have taken them off myself.”

“Oh dear,” Victor grinned, used to Sherlock’s stubbornness. He reached for them without hesitation. “Sorry, I hadn’t realized your trousers were exactly where you wanted them. Give me your leg, I’ll have them artfully arranged halfway on in a tic.”

“Wanker,” Sherlock mumbled.

Victor tossed his bottoms to the floor and snuggled up behind him. “You’re definitely not at your best now.”

Sherlock didn’t respond to that. Instead, he shifted backwards for several minutes, maneuvering his shoulder under Victor’s chin, and his thigh backwards between Victor’s own two legs. After making Victor into the prfect body pillow, he took his arm as the coup de grâce and held it in front of him. “I woke up with you yesterday,” he said into the dark. “And I woke up to this life where I live with a stranger, and you’re my long distance husband.”

Victor gave Sherlock’s bare shoulder a scrub with the stubble on his chin, the way Sherlock liked it. “I’m sorry about your day.”

Sherlock was suddenly stiff under his fingertips. “You don’t have anything else to say?”

“ _Hope is the feathered thing_ ,” Victor murmured, closing his eyes.

“Not the time,” Sherlock snapped. “Although I guess I should count my blessings that you didn’t this is the way the world ends me.”

“We live apart because it works better for us, Will. If we cohabitate too long you get sulky and moody and when I spend most of my year working and see you every four months, you’re glad to see me. We have three or four holidays a year, and it works out for us. I work for your brother, and you’ve been clean five years.”

“But John is surprised by you.”

“You’ve lived with him a year. You do seem to like him a lot -- the not-knowing only goes one way, and you speak highly of him, although you call him an idiot.”

“Well, obviously he is an idiot. But he’s the proper size to stand next to.”

“Ah, Sherlock,” Victor said, placing his palm over the flat plane of his stomach. On his side, and clumsy with sleep, Sherlock’s abdomen was soft beneath his touch. “You’re being petulant. As far as I can tell, he’s a genuinely good man, and you sometimes talk about him at length.”

Sherlock made a noise like a soft raspberry, and Victor laughed, amused by this blast from the Sherlock he had right after they’d fallen in together. His hands inched lower, towards Sherlock’s waistband. “Would you like me to…”

Sherlock paused for a moment. “It’s fine,” he said, eventually, picking up Victor's hand and moving it higher, until it rested against the soft perpetual flex of his heart.

*

The next day they had Greg over, loaded down with old case files. Victor found himself swallowed in an imporobably hug. Although Greg was shorter than Victor, he had a paternal way of making him feel completely enveloped. “Good to see you, son,” he said, when he finally let him go, “sorry to have you in the country under such dour circumstances.”

“Ah,” Victor said, just as glad to see Lestrade, “Sherlock’ll be right as rain soon enough. Who knows, maybe he’s staged this whole amnesia gig because he was bored and I’d neglected him too long.”

“Almost sounds like him,” Lestrade grinned, and made his way over to him.

Sherlock faked disinterest in Lestrade’s files to be a brat (it hit Victor suddenly that if there was no spontaneous recovery of memories, he was going to have to deal with petulant early-twenties Sherlock again, and he gave a shudder.) but was clearly secretly pleased to see a face he was familiar with in uncomplicated terms. There was only the warm responsibility of Greg, not an entire friendship lost to him, or a boyfriend-turned-husband he no longer lived with.

“John, would you help me make lunch?” he asked.

He left John to fry eggs for sandwiches as he himself combed through the pantry and kitchen for something suitable for Sherlock.

They worked in a companionable silence, the rumble of Sherlock and Lestrade’s conversation drifting into the kitchen, but not quite audible. Victor felt relaxed for the first time in a long time for having it in the background.

“I’ve been forgetting about the bird all day,” Victor said, arranging the plate

“The bird Mycroft mentioned?”

Victor inclined his head. “In uni, Sherlock kidnapped the linguistics department’s African Grey. He was a bit ahead of the curve on these things.”

“He thought it wasn’t being treated well?”

Victor put a cherry tomato into his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. “Not poorly, exactly, but it was left alone during non-experiement hours. He was wild about that thing. His name was Mr. Bald Spot, after the head of the department.”

“He did break into Baskerville because of a little girl’s rabbit,” John said, plating a sandwich and turning to the next. “Bluebell.”

“He’s a softie,” Victor agreed. “Baskerville is my favorite of the cases you’ve written up.”

“So what happened with the bird?”

“Well, they wouldn’t let Sherlock have it, which obviously was his top plan, and they wouldn’t let Mycroft buy it, and Sherlock refused to change his major, even on paper. So Mycroft wrote a lot of really impressive articles on syntax and the implications of words borrowed from languages and taking on the grammatical rules of the second language and the difference in pauses across cultures and let the Uni publish them in exchange for what amounted to supervised visitation. I always felt like Mycroft went above and beyond, but Sherlock feels like he failed him. It’s the problem with thinking your brother is all-powerful.”

“Huh,” John said, clearly thinking about it. “Now though. There’s not much Mycroft wants that he doesn’t get.”

“This is true,” Victor replied.

And they were off the topic of Sherlock’s older brother. “What’s that, then?”

“Garnish stew,” Victor said, conspiratorially. “I started feeding it to him after we’d lived together a few years. I’m using a bit of a cheat code right now, because he’s never seen me do it before.”

Victor held the shallow bowl in his hands, full of black olives, cheese cubes, arugula, croutons and sardines he’d found in a can at the back of the pantry, all arranged artfully. “Its the best I could do on short notice.”

John grinned at him. “Sometimes the chef has to make the soup du jour ”

*

The good news: he was becoming fond of John Watson. John Watson was excellent at shopping, and ordering take-aways, and did not require constant chatter. Also, and the most important bit, he got along with Sherlock, not like an indulgent arsehole with a neuro-atypical child, as his own parents regarded Sherlock, but as a friend, getting caught up in Sherlock’s fascination with the seemingly mundane.

Also, after stumbling into the storage closet in search of a clean towel one afternoon, he came across a treasure trove of board games.

He pulled out his phone and snapped a picture, shooting it over to John’s phone with a message. _What is this?_

John had gone back to work at the clinic, after taking four days off to tend to his friend, leaving him in Victor’s capable hands. He text back while Victor returned, towel in hand, to the shower. _Talk about cheat codes he’s nuts about them just dont play cluedo._

Victor was well aware, of course. He’d once walked in on Sherlock and Mycroft playing Snap and Sherlock had acted more horrified to be caught than the time he had caught him in women’s lingerie.

The fact that John knew, however, warmed him from the chest out like a firefly. Victor demanded they all play Sorry! the next evening.

*

The bad news: Sherlock sometimes woke up rebooted back to Windows 98 again. There were several false starts in the coming days. Twice in the week after, Sherlock woke up, apologizing for crashing Victor’s motorbike. Once, he’d been completely hysterical, promising to get clean.

They had the exchange a few times, where Sherlock accused him of being old, or worse, his father, which was distressing, because he was only thirty-four. Generally, it had evened out after Victor had explained, and he could generally, with some coaching, access memories from the previous days since.

A week after his incident, after they’d decided to lower Sherlock’s dosage of pain killers, Sherlock started fussing with his head in his sleep. Victor wasn’t sure if it was irritation from his hair growing back or pain, but he went to fetch a bag of frozen peas from the kitchen just in case. Sherlock woke twenty minutes after he’d started to stir, and Victor gestured at them without turning around from the desk he’d commandeered in Sherlock’s room. He was trying to keep up with his team, and all new incoming codes, but it was hard with him in London, feeling like he was on a second honeymoon. Sherlock, despite having to puzzle out new elements of his life, was generally more jovial than Victor had seen him in years.

He heard him rustle for a minute before he turned around.

“Good morning,” he said.

“You’re old,” Sherlock pointed out.

“We’re both old,” Victor retorted, fighting the urge to take off his glasses.

Sherlock broke into a grin, adjusting the peas against the back of his head. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

“You bloody...” Victor grumbled, giving him a thump on the shoulders, shoving him backwards. The back of Sherlock’s knees hit his mattress, and Victor gave him another shove, and suddenly he was flat on his back, breathing quickly. Victor moved into the vee of Sherlock’s legs, lowering himself to press against him with maximum contact. “Oh Sherlock,” he said, feeling fond and elated to have his partner back, if only for a moment, joking and aware as he had been.

Under him, sherlock’s mouth was a soft liquid curve, and Victor leaned down to kiss it. He could feel Sherlock, hot and solid beneath him and he wound one hand into Sherlock’s curls as he kissed him, soft and sweet and sweeping.

Sherlock let him for a while, before he planted his hands on Victor’s shoulders and pushed him away.

“Let me take care of that,” Victor said, in a low voice, moving his hand down to sherlock’s navel, touching the hair below it.

Sherlock’s eyes shuddered closed and he shook his head. “Giving in to the thing just makes it...”

“Come on, Will,” Victor pleaded. “You’ll get cranky. Usually I leave you then, but I can’t leave you now.”

Sherlock pretended to think about it. “Do you want to?”

“I want you to be happy,” Victor snapped.

“Not the same thing,” Sherlock said and rolled over.

“Sherlock,” Victor said. “This is one of the things we fight about. I’m your -- I’m your… just let me help you! I love you and I don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’ll deal with it later.”

“I don’t want you to deal with it later. The time you’re thinking of happened in 2002 or 2003,” Victor reminded him, because even then Sherlock hadn’t liked to let Victor take care of his needs very often. Back then, he’d just been starting to abstain from both food and sex. “It’s been months since I’ve touched you.”

He could see Sherlock starting to relent. “Not intercourse,” he said, putting his head back down against the bed.

“Intercurial?” Victor suggested. “It’s your favorite, but I don’t think you’ve tried it out yet.”

“How often does one hear that phrase?” Sherlock laughed, and Victor started in on his buttons.


	4. Chapter 4

There were days when Sherlock would bring something up that seemed like new memories surfacing. “That car you like,” he’d said to Victor, and Victor’s heart leapt because he hadn’t learned to drive until he’d gone overseas.

“John,” he said, ‘you remember the cat -- the one that was too dark to see in the security footage but kept tripping off the alarm?“

Victor, glumly, started counting down his days. A month passed from the time he’d touched down in London. The trip had been longer than their little holidays together since Victor had moved out of the country, years ago, and now Victor was only waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Except, living with John in 221b was something like a miracle. John and Victor changed their telly plan so they could watch matches together, and between the two of them they had lobbied for a shelf of their own in the fridge, There was almost never anything unsavory dripping onto their bottles of beer. John was impressed with Victor’s adaptations in regaards to the care and feeding of one Sherlock Holmes, and John was much, much better at dealing with Sherlock in a strop than Victor had been.

Also, perhaps John was hard of hearing. Victor could think of no other explanation of the fact that John was not bothered by Sherlock when he sawed out, for hours at a time, dissonant note after dissonant note. Victor, although untalented in the area, was an enthusiast and had to physically remove himself from the premises when Sherlock began to butcher classics. John simply made tea.

The day Sherlock got a call from Lestrade, asking him if he felt like taking on a case, Victor’s heart sank to his shoes. “Uh huh,” Sherlock was saying, into his mobile, and already making his way out of the door. He’d been in the middle of a conversation with Victor when his phone had lit up with the incoming call, and Sherlock had simply stopped, mid sentence to answer the call.

Victor had gone about tidying up, stacking all of Sherlock’s files into some semblance of order, and replacing John’s computer onto his chair after brushing the crumbs from the keyboard.

Sherlock poked his head back into the flat. “Well? Aren’t you coming?”

*

John called him in the evening. “I’m home from the clinic,” John said. “And I got your note. You’re worth your weight in gold for that.”

“Ha!” Victor said, holding his mobile to his ear with his shoulder, “You know how he attracts the sane ones. Any time, Watson. Are you bored?”

“Nah,” John said, “I figured you guys could catch up because, you know, I’m always underfoot.”

“Oh. Uh, well, you’re welcome to meet up at barts if you like, later. Sherlock reckons we’ll be using the lab for a while,” Victor elaborated, secretly pleased. He’d never seen Sherlock in full action, not really. He was on fire, and Victor felt he was looking at a masterpiece he’d had the privilege of watching develop.

John Watson stopped by near midnight, bringing jammie dodgers and a whole jar of the little sweet pickles Sherlock liked for him and a bag of fish and chips and the day’s paper for Victor, staying just long enough to pass them out like a doting grandfather before yawning and heading home.

“You really know how to pick a flatmate,” Victor told him.

“I wish I remembered how I brainwashed him into staying,” Sherlock joked, looking down at the jar in his hands, and twisting off the lid.

*

“You could… potentially code from here, couldn’t you?” Sherlock asked him.

“Hm?” Victor rolled over to face him without opening his eyes. “Say again?”

Sherlock had kept him out all night, first locating and then staking out a counterfeit ring turned exotic animal smuggling business. “You could hack or code for Mycroft here,” Sherlock said, sounding firmer this time. “And give up on stupid America. The little delinquents reading for poetry don’t need you.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said, dryly, and dragging his bedding above his head to shield him from the light.

“I mean it. If the biggest fight we have is the frequency of intercourse, then I don’t understand why you don’t live here.”

“That’s not the only fight,” Victor said, in his blanket cocoon. If only he were asleep, and not having this conversation.

“In six weeks its been the only fight.”

Resigned to his fate, Victor sat up. “I guess I don’t have much to fight about with twenty five year old you, but soon you’ll have all of your memories back in place and you’ll be back to … just being annoyed with my presence in general, I guess.”

“You guessed twice in that sentence,” Sherlock said, scowling. “Don’t guess. Tell me what we fight about.”

“It’s not usually a fight, Will.” Victor scrubbed a hand across his face. “It just usually gets to a point where you’re tired of seeing me. I might turn on the telly and you’ll sigh for five minutes. Or you’ll wake up with morning wood on a random thursday and instead of letting me help you with it, you’ll say my look at the time, don’t you figure it’s time to put you back on a plane.”

“Then why do you stay?”

“Because you’re the love of my life, you dolt. And when I went off to work for Mycroft, the first time, you fell in love with me back, I think. When I’m not here, you text me twenty two times a day to tell me about tobacco ash or the breaking point of textiles or gossip about Mrs. Hudson’s love life and then I come visit for two weeks and you’re … you’re a delight. I don’t know, Sherlock, that seems worth it to me. And you, I think. Unless you’ve got something different to say about it now.”

Sherlock moved close to him, almost into his lap. They were both in pajamas, and Sherlock nestled in close to his chest, wrapping both arms around the broad flat planes of Victor’s back. “I don’t know what didn’t work before, and I can’t promise that things will be better, but if there’s a way for us to stay in the same country, I’d like to try. Because I feel like that about you now.”

Victor held on to Sherlock in a vice grip, like the tide was coming and Sherlock was the dock, and Victor thought about how this had come together and fallen apart and come back together, and could it possibly stay that way. He’d thought of one different variable, one thing that was different with Victor trying to stay with Sherlock for longer than he had since Uni.

But Sherlock’s mind had snagged on something else.

“You’re my what, Victor? Because I haven’t heard you say it once since I fell off that building.”

“You’re my ex husband,” Victor said, in a very quiet voice. Sherlock tried to struggle back to get a better look at Victor’s face, but he held on to him. “Because it made you happier. You got to a point where I was visiting and you were miserable and annoyed to hell and back with me and I said, I absolve you all of your husband responsibilities and that changed our lives. You called Mycroft to un-marry us and you were euphoric for a year. It may have been our best year.”

There was radio silence from Sherlock as he went limp, heavy against Victor’s chest, and he rearranged his arms to stroke up the knobby length of Sherlock’s spine. He kept stroking and Sherlock fell apart, shaking in his arms.

“I don’t know what that means,” Sherlock said, finally. “About me. Or us.”

“If it helps,” Victor said, and winced at himself for being the sort of person who said that sort of thing, “I don’t think of you as my ex-husband.”

“I wish I knew what I thought.”

“Forget what you thought. What do you think, right now?”

“That we should be…”

“Wait,” Victor said, and unfolded himself. “If you were going to hide something important in this room, where would it be?”

Sherlock looked around the room. “I suspect there is a loose floorboard. Probably under one of the legs of the bed. Otherwise my placement of the bed seems ill-advised.”

“Alright, help me move it,”  Victor said, setting his shoulder against the post of the headboard.

Sherlock was right, as he was sometimes. “Close your eyes,” Victor said, pawing through Sherlock’s hiding hole. This, he realized, was probably where he’d had his emergency cocain before Mycroft had removed it. He found what he was looking for behind the jar of his teeth, and tonsils.

“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock huffed.

Victor situated himself. “Alright, go ahead and open them.”

Sherlock did. “What are you doing down there?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” Victor said, undaunted, knowing that he’d asked before, but as far as Sherlock remembered, he was being asked for the first time. “You insufferable know it all, would you please do me the honor of being my husband?”

“Again,” Sherlock said.

Victor frowned, but started over. “Sherlock Holmes, will you be my husband?”

“No, it was an addendum, not a correction,” Sherlock said.

Victor started a third time. “Sherlock Holmes. Will you please, for the love of God, marry me? Again, I mean. Marry me again.”

“You didn’t call me Will. You always call me Will when you’re being serious.”

Victor could have pulled out his own hair. “Because Will will you marry me sounded silly the first time,” Victor huffed. “Now can I put your old bloody ring back on you or not?”

Sherlock stuck out his hand.

And then, after a moment, “How did you know?”

“I played out a hunch,” Victor said. “You wanted to know how you felt two months ago -- I think that was it. Now please stop ruining the moment and lets go back to bed.”

*

John mentioned he had been looking at flats around town over takeout as they all went through their own pile of files, looking for discrepancies between minutes and billing in a phone sex company’s financial records.

“Don’t be daft, John. You can’t live in this part of London on your salary,” Sherlock said. “Go back to your files.”

John Watson turned red from his face to the back of his neck. “What he meant,” Victor said, because generally he and John acted as Sherlock’s manners, and John could hardly respond to himself, so the responsibility fell to him. “Was that we find you an important part of life here. We would be … sad to see you go.”

Sherlock didn’t agree with Victor out loud, but he didn’t deny it either, which was practically a win.

“I just. You two seem to be getting along so well, and I know three is a crowd, and I’d still see the two of you...” John trailed off, still blushing.

“Oh. nonsense, then. People like us,” Victor said, “people like Sherlock bloody Holmes don’t need you to do things for their convenience. You shouldn’t worry about stepping on each other’s toes because he’ll be sure to give you a clip round the ears if you do.”

“You’re part of the work,” Sherlock said.

John went back to his files, frowning.

Later, Victor took him to task. “It wasn’t enough, Will,” he said. “Your best mate thinks you don’t need him now that I’m back in town and honestly… he’s … well, he might be the reason things have worked out so well this time. We’ve never cohabitated this well before and I think it’s him, with his take out and medical knowledge, and, you know, the fact that he roots for Mann U. Buffering between us and making all that endless tea and murdering people who want to hurt you. It’s good for the team morale.”

Sherlock, by that point, was pretending to be asleep, but Victor knew not to press once he’d got Sherlock thinking. He had to come to the logical conclusion on his own. Victor turned out the lights and went to lay with his head at the other end of the bed, because Sherlock was doing a bloody starfish impression to inconvenience him, which was his default way of dealing with being given truths he wasn’t interested in hearing.

How Victor had ended up married (and unmarried, and engaged to again) to the most passive aggressive nutter on the planet escaped him.

While he laid on the bed, upside down and in much too close proximity to Sherlock Holmes’ feet, he text Mycroft. _Any opportunity to transfer back to London? Have discussed options with one SH about long term living._

*

Mornings were the most strangest at 221b, now. Sometimes, Sherlock woke up worried about the bike accident, and sometimes he woke up in a huff because when he’d fallen from the side of the building that night, they’d all been too focused on him to properly store his bird-nest experiment and it had been scattered to the wind before he’d thought about it.

The day after John Watson had mentioned a possible move, Sherlock woke up confused tat they didn’t live on Montague, before that faded into a quiet disorientation for the rest of the day where he recognized John but couldn’t find where the kept the coffee, but then made himself a cup and spat it out in the sink. “I forgot,” he said blankly. “I hate coffee.”

But the next morning, he leapt out of bed so quickly that Victor sat upright with a gasp, assuming the worst. Instead he was greeted with the sight of a shirtless Sherlock leaping out of bed. Victor followed him, amused, pulling on a soft cotton shirt as he did. Sherlock bounded up the stairs, and into John Watson’s room.

“John Watson!” Shelrock shouted, making something that could only be described as a flying leap into John’s bed. “You keep me right!” Sherlock climbed above John on all fours and leaned down to nuzzle his nose with his own.

John had twisted into sudden wakefulness as Sherlock had made his way, loudly, into his room. He looked up at him with shocked eyes. “Um. Good morning.”

“You cannot simply leave Baker Street.” Sherlock said, haughty and demanding, which looked ridiculous coming from a shirtless man in plain sleep trousers, in another man’s bed. “It was an idiotic thought. I demand you get rid of it.”

Victor lounged against the doorway.

“You’re my blogger,” Sherlock continued. “I am lost without my blogger.”

John looked pleased, but good naturedly pushed Sherlock off of him so he could clamor up. “What’s this then?”

“Victor and I. We need you. I need you. Now that’s quite enough emotion for this year. I’ll… remind you again next employee’s day.”

“Hey! Not your employee, Sherlock!”

“Semantics,” Sherlock scoffed, waving away John’s concern, from his respectable place beside John’s bed. “I know you require regular ruts, but when you meet a woman that doesn’t quibble at the first sign of kidnapping, you may renovate 221C.”

John looked like he knew he should argue, but was too happy to give it a proper shot. Victor reminded himself to say “A bit not good,” to Sherlock on John’s behalf later.

“Also, I’m going to need you to be my best man. Victor can’t have you, you were mine first.”

Victor went to make breakfast, humming as he padded into the kitchen. He made a proper breakfast for John and himself, bacon and tomatoes and sausage and filled Sherlock’s bowl with chick peas.

During his fry-up, Mycroft Holmes finally got around to texting him back. _Sorry - detained. You know I’ve only been too ready. Welcome home._

 


End file.
